Sibelius Culture Trail

Lake Tuusula and the area where we have our "Sibelius Culture Trail" trip is situated about 40km north from the center of Helsinki. The natural beauty of Lake Tuusula attracted many masters of art, music and literature. The golden age of Finnish art is brought to life at home museums, which take the visitor back to the heyday of the Finnish National Romantic era at the turn of the 20th century.

We will visit Ainola - the home museum of Jean Sibelius. Ainola was the home of Jean Sibelius and his family from 1904. This timber-built villa was designed by the renowed Finnish architect Lars Sonck. Its distance from the hustle and bustle of the nation’s capital gave the composer the peace that he needed for his creative endeavours, while other artistic families living in the neighbourhood provided a lively social circle. Entrance fee to Ainola is included.

Ainola was named after the master composer's wife, Aino. Sibelius fell in love with the natural beauty of the area and lived in here most of his life. You can still experience the silence which the composer considered indispensable for this work. The grave of the composer and his wife Aino is located in the garden. The Ainola home museum is open to the public only in summertime.

In the early 1900s a unique artist community formed around Lake Tuusula. The artists who lived and worked here had an enormous impact on nurturing the Finnish identity, on our cultural history and on Finnish society as a whole. They include the author Juhani Aho, the poet J. H. Erkko, painters Pekka Halonen, Eero Järnefelt and Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, and above mentioned the composer Jean Sibelius. Many of their villas are now home museums. You can shop along the Lake Tuusula Shore Road in an old barn, at a former ironworks, in modern factory outlets and in the workshops of local artisans.

Sibelius Culture Trail trip is mostly available on Sundays during the summer season 2018. If you would like to have this trip in some other day or as a private trip, please contact us and we will try to arrange it according to your wishes. Welcome!